Epic Games hit with class-action lawsuit over hacked Fortnite accounts

Epic Games is facing a class-action lawsuit following a data breach which exposed personal information from millions of users’ accounts.

The data breach occurred back in January this year, when hackers found a flaw in Fortnite’s login system, allowing them to impersonate players and purchase V-Bucks with the bank information attached to their accounts.

The graphic below, made by Bleeping Computer, illustrates how hackers were getting into players’ accounts.

According to Polygon, the lawsuit has been filed by Franklin D. Azar and Associates in US District Court in North Carolina on behalf of more than 100 class members. They’re claiming Epic failed “to maintain adequate security measures and notify users of the security breach in a timely manner”.

The law firm reported that Epic was notified about the security issue back in November 2018, but didn’t acknowledge the problem until two months later.

“Affected Fortnite users have suffered an ascertainable loss in that they have had fraudulent charges made to their credit or debit cards and must undertake additional security measures, some at their own expense, to minimise the risk of future data breaches including cancelling credit cards associated with their Epic Games/Fortnite accounts and changing passwords for those accounts,” Franklin D. Azar and Associates states.

“Furthermore, Fortnite users have no guarantee that the above security measures will in fact adequately protect their personal information. Fortnite users therefore have an ongoing interest in ensuring that their personal information is protected from past and future cyber-security threats.”

One of the more legitimate arguments against the Epic Games Store has centred around the company’s security issues, and while the problems allowing this data breach have since been fixed, perhaps the lawsuit will serve as the motivation it needs to make its service more secure.